The Agricultural and Food Engineering Department was established in 1952, as the Agricultural Engineering Department on the recommendation of the Dhar Committee appointed by the Board of Governors, IIT Kharagpur in 1950. Subsequently on the upgradation of its academic programme, the department was renamed as the Agricultural and Food Engineering Department in 1994. Among the sixteen IITs, IIT Kharagpur has the sole distinction of having an Agricultural and Food Engineering Department.It conducts annual fest named Prakriti to create a platform for sharing ideas about agricultural developments from all over the country.[1]

The department has developed a few window - based interactive software packages for use as teaching and research tools. These include Decision Support System for estimating Reference Crop Evapotranspiration (DSS_ET), Hydrologic Calculator to perform various hydrologic analyses and Soil Conservation Structure Designer to design various soil conservation structures. DSS_ET includes more than 20 ET estimation methods. It estimates ET and ranks applicable ET estimation methods based on data availability and climatic condition.

The traditional method of rice cultivation in wet soil requires 5-6 times ploughing by bullocks. The time and energy spent by man and animal has been found to be greatly reduced by the use of IIT Puddler. The machine can be pulled by a pair of bullocks and can cover 1 hectare area in a day.

Products like �Chhana', is the base material used for preparation of several Indian sweets like rasogolla and sandesh. A technology has been developed for continuous production of chhana by using helical tube heat exchangers and a whey separator. Sandesh, a delicious milk-sweet can be produced continuously by using a screw kneader and a vented single screw extruder. Untouched by human hand, the product attains greater shelf-life than those available in markets.

Tea is conventionally cultivated in sloping lands and foothills. The department has developed technology to successfully cultivate tea in plain lands and wastelands by adopting appropriate land slope, drainage, plantation of shade trees and pressurized irrigation. With these management practices tea can be grown in lateritic plains and wastelands.

A tractor seat having 18.9 N.mm-1 spring constant and 1.09 N.s.mm-1 damping coefficient has been found to reduce significantly the vibration and bring comfort to the operator. The seat has been field tested and recommended for Indian tractors.

Polyhouse has been constructed for cultivation of off-season crops at controlled temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide inside the structure as per the requirement of the crops. The house can also be used to raise seedlings of vegetables and flowers. It is made of locally available bamboo and GI poles, mild steel flats and ultra-violet stabilized plastic films.

In an air-recirculatory dryer, a part of the exhaust air is recycled along with the ambient air. This gives higher thermal efficiency and produces dry products having low surface hardness and improved colour and flavor characteristics. The developed dryer can produce 2-3 kg dry products in about 6-7 hours. The technology has been transferred to SSP Ltd., Faridabad.

Waste materials generated from agricultural, forest, aquatic, domestic and industrial sources are recycled and converted into compost. Different microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria and earthworms have been used as compost accelerators. The technology has already been transferred to Shewood Agrotech to commercially produce solid Vermicompost and liquid Vermiwash.

A suitable process along with a processor has been developed to produce biodiesel from nonedible oils such as Jatropha, Karanja, Mahua, Simaruba with high free fatty acids. The processor comprised a reactor, chemical mixing tank and a settling funnel and it can handle 10 liters of oil per batch. The yield of biodiesel is around 98% and the fuel properties of biodiesel so produced are within the biodiesel standards prescribed by India, America and Europe.